Mike O’Connor: Queensland’s hospital system teeters on brink of collapse

Queensland’s hospital system is on the brink of collapse thanks to a “catastrophic lack of foresight” from the government and all we get is a litany of excuses, writes Mike O’Connor. VOTE IN OUR POLL

When the wife of a close friend of mine suffered a series of sudden and violent seizures, he dialled triple-0 and was one of the lucky ones, the paramedics arriving quickly and heading for the nearest hospital with their siren wailing.

There were no beds, however, at the nearest hospital with the emergency department jammed with ramped ambulances which had been there for hours so it was onto the next nearest hospital where the story was the same with more ambulances ramped while their patients waited to be seen.

Siren still wailing, they headed for Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital where they ramped for two hours before being seen by doctors. Her condition was stabilised and she then spent the next seven hours lying on a gurney in a corridor with other emergency patients, all of them waiting for a bed in a ward.

Ambulance ramping at the Princess Alexandra Hospital. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Her husband described the scene thus: “Bedridden patients stacked in frantic corridors waiting for beds, some of them with drips and using bed pans with one elderly man lying there almost naked.

“The universal criticism by every member of the many medical and support staff, all overworked, to whom I spoke was the state government’s catastrophic lack of foresight.”

That’s what it’s like now at the coalface of the state’s health system day after chaotic day as it teeters on the brink of collapse, a system that was once arguably the best in the nation.

Doctors warn that staff are dangerously overworked and that the situation is now critical while the response from the government, typically, has been political damage control in the form of a litany of excuses.

If it’s not Covid, an excuse that is now two years old and not ageing well, then it’s the flu season which we are now being told could be worse than Covid. The flu season is as predictable as westerly winds at the Ekka but apparently its arrival this year caught the government unawares.

You might also wonder why if the current influenza strain is “worse than Covid,” then why aren’t we being herded into our homes by mounted police and locked down in virtual house-arrest?

Because lockdowns, once seen as a political plus are now poison. It has gradually dawned on people that they were conned during Covid by the state sponsored prophets of apocalyptic doom so lockdowns as part of a political ploy to generate fear and blame the health system disaster on the flu are not an option.

Another trend that has caught Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Health Minister Yvette D’Ath by surprise is the ageing of the population. Apparently they thought we were all going to get younger. If this dynamic duo has found a way to make this happen, I look forward to them sharing the secret with the rest of us.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: John Gass

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had barely finished organising his new business cards when Premier Palaszczuk revealed she was asking him to tip truckloads of dollars into our health system.

His nasty predecessor had politely declined this demand which, if you follow the Premier’s play sheet, is the reason our hospitals are shambolic.

With the budget for the NDIS spiralling out of control, the inflation genie well and truly out of the bottle, interest rates heading north and property prices beginning to head south, the last thing the newly minted PM is going to do is throw Ms Palaszczuk a financial lifeline.

One solution, surely born of a brainstorming session by the government’s battalion of media advisers, was to create satellite medical centres. Alas, these don’t have beds which does rather limit their use unless you are inclined sit in a chair for the length of your treatment.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles, ever helpful in a crisis, laid the blame for the inability of the health system to give Queenslanders what they paid for at the feet of their local GP.

It seems they were refusing to see patients because they were afraid of catching Covid and were sending them to hospital emergency departments instead.

He offered no proof of this occurring and in a rare display of political discretion, has not mentioned it since.

Ms Palaszczuk has promised an increase in funding in the forthcoming budget. That’s lovely but she could hardly announce a reduction.

Ms D’Ath has failed in the portfolio but looking at the threadbare fabric of talent on the government benches you would wonder who is up to the job of restructuring the department and delivering the health system that we deserve.

The situation is, quite simply, a disgrace and verges on criminal negligence.